Five Minutes to Midnight
by M O R U H I N E
Summary: The world is rotten, and there is no God. This much Nariko Sakura is sure of, but when the Kira killings begin, her opinion is shifted, and she finds happiness in knowing that someone is setting things straight... [LxOC. If you squint, slight LightxOC]
1. Rewind, Repeat

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note (though if you do and would like to lend it to me, than it would be most appreciated), nor do I own 'I'm a Fake' by The Used.

xxxxx

_"…I'm alive, and I swear I'm the cleanest I have ever been…"_

_Broken, she stood there. She stood, her eyes wide with infinite horror and despair as she stared down at him, unmoving in the arms of the boy._

_No sound penetrated her, even though she could vaguely see the moving of the lips of those around her._

_It was silent agony._

_Her huge eyes were fixated on his face, watching with helplessness as his own slowly fluttered closed._

_Him, the monster, the bakemono, held him in his arms, shaking. Shaking with silent laughter. His victory._

_Still silently laughing, he turned his malicious eyes to her, and she knew that he had won._

_And then she screamed._

* * *

Every day was the same.

It was all so predictable; the almost instant transition of one moment to the next, the shift of minutes unfolding into hours, the muted but constant ticking away of time.

Every day, she would awake at the crack of dawn with the chill of knowing she would face another twenty-four hours of the same thing she had been doing for the past seventeen years.

She would open the door to the same bedroom she had always stayed in, stare around the hallway that led to the long-since empty room of her parents, and then go downstairs and eat something—always the same.

She would leave for school, learn the same things that they had been teaching for decades, and then return home to the empty house once again.

Things used to be different.

She used to pray, pray to God that He would send her a way out of her circle, or perhaps an angel to accompany her, to make it easier to exist.

He has yet to send her a reply.

It was because of that, this one small wish that remained unfulfilled, that she no longer believed that God existed. Perhaps he did at one time, when the world he had created was still young and easy to manipulate, but now… Now that the world could function on it's own, now that he was no longer needed to guide them, he had lost interest and disappeared.

That much, she was sure of.

The world was rotten. It was completely, hopelessly rotten.

God had lost interest, and he had abandoned her. But she was okay with this. She didn't need him.

She didn't need anybody.

Every day was the same.

It was as if it was mirrored, or perhaps some unseen being was playing one simple day of her life over and over again. Her life was stuck in rewind.

Rewind and repeat.

**Rewind and repeat.**

_Rewind and repeat._

* * *

As Sakura stepped into the warmth of the bar she waitresses at, she was greeted by the welcoming shouts of the other workers and the locals who came around just for the waitresses—but mainly they came for Nori, the extravagantly beautiful one of the four.

Most of the waitresses that worked here were beautiful. Sakura often wondered why she had been hired—she was plain as could be. Plain, plain, plain. That was how she saw herself. Nariko Sakura—or Momochi Koyana, as she was called while working here (she was underage, after all)—was undeniably hideous in comparison to the other three waitresses.

_"--killed and injured six people yesterday in downtown Shinjuku remains cordoned inside a nursery school with eight hostages: young children and their teachers." _The small TV was turned on to the news, and Sakura turned to scowl at it, still standing in the doorway.

Rotten. Simply rotten.

Innocence does not exist. Innocence is something that fades.

When you live in the modern day world, you see many sighs, but all of the wrong ones. You hear many things, but all of the wrong words.

What is the world coming to?

_"The police are currently trying to negotiate the release of the hostages."_

Pathetic. Truly pathetic.

Negotiation never works. Compromise is something that hasn't been really capable for ages now.

They always find loopholes.

When will it all stop?

_"Wait! There's movement!"_

A flare of hope?

_"The hostages are coming out!"_

Her eyes widened at the sight framed within the TV screen. Children rushed from the building, screaming and crying.

_"Everyone's out! The police are rushing in!"_

She watched the over-excited reported, her jaw on the verge of falling to the floor.

It couldn't be happening… Could it be?

_"Will they be able to arrest—?"_

Sakura softly damned the TV's bad quality as a blur of white and gray came over the screen. A moment later, it returned and she caught the reporter's scream:

…_"is dead!"_

She became still, a statue standing there among the crowd.

_"The police are expressing that they have not shot him."_

Surely, they must have… How else…?

_"Could he have committed suicide?"_

No… he wouldn't have just…

_"According to the hostages, he just collapsed!"_

She shook her head, sighing as she turned away from the TV.

She had no qualms in that belief. There was no God. It was good timing… that was all…

"Eh? Momochi-san, get your ass to work!"

Scowling slightly, Sakura turned when her boss shouted at her to get moving.

"Ah! Momochi-chan, konnichiwa!" Nori shouted, waving Sakura over.

She shrugged out of her black coat, revealing the same mildly revealing outfit that three other women in the place were wearing.

Sakura forced herself to smile, which wasn't hard, since she had been faking smiles left and right as of late, and bounded 'happily' over to where Nori-chan was talking animatedly with two men.

* * *

The excitement of being an illegal waitress at a bar had long since worn off for Nariko Sakura.

One of them men with Nori-chan had gone as far as to offer sixty yen for a lap dance from both girls.

'Momochi Koyana' had been promptly fired, since apparently, shoving a broken beer bottle down a man's throat "scared off business".

Of course, she had waited until fifteen minutes after his offer, when he tried to stuff his hand down her and Nori-chan's skirts at the same time.

She had left with a little token of gratitude—in other words, she robbed the poor soul of whatever money she could find in his pockets.

She was approximately forty thousand yen richer.

Hip-hip-hooray.

* * *

The flashing neon lights of the streets were beginning to annoy Sakura to no end as she weaved through the crowds, struggling to break through the groups of teens that were starting to form in front of the more popular hangouts.

She scowled—everyone was complaining because either they couldn't find their dates, or they had simply been stood-up.

It was pathetic.

Seeing no other way out of the traffic, Sakura turned a corner and darted hurriedly through a darkened alley, entering on the other side to see that this street was generally empty.

She smiled at her little "victory" and popped another piece of chocolate into her mouth.

And then the aggravating sound of motorcycles screeching to a halt alerted her, and she remembered that it was wise to walk on the crowded streets at night in comparison to the empty ones… where no one could see her… where anything could happen…

She was surrounded by men. Very, very, very ugly men.

"Ah, Taku-san, she's a hottie!"

Had she not been so frightened, Sakura would have snorted. Hottie? Were they fucking blind?

"My name is Shibuimaru Takou," A repulsive man donning shades and leather leaned forward, completely invading her personal bubble. With his gloved hands, he slid down his sunglasses, his eyes making evident trips up and down her body. "Shibutaku for short."

"I'm sorry," she said, rigid as they began to circle her. "I really must be going…"

"Hear that? She's sorry! How cute!"

Sakura scowled, and the next thing she knew that had her pinned against one another, a metal rod to her throat. She couldn't move at all.

"Oi! Take off her clothes!"

Hands reached down, tearing away at her belt and snapping open her jeans.

"Stop, please!"

They sniggered perversely, continuing to undo every last button and buckle that was on her clothing until one yank would send her shirt flying, one tug would send her pants falling…

Then there was the boy. He was her age, and undeniably handsome. He stood in perfect view of the scene, all attention diverted to a manga in which he seemed to be writing something. What was he doing? Why wasn't he helping?

He looked up suddenly, his eyes meeting with hers, and Sakura saw a look of someone she knew she should admire. His eyes were seemingly vacant, but there was something more within the depths. She focused on this to relieve the certain pain of what was coming.

Ambition, she realized, power. He was Inhuman.

He glanced down at his watch, and smiled slightly.

She can't explain what happened next. She simply couldn't.

Shibutaku collapsed, writhing in agony, and she instantly found herself breaking out into a run. She didn't look back, her feet pounding against the concrete as she darted away, as quickly as she could.

There was a sickening crunch, and she knew that someone had died, but still she didn't look back. She didn't think that she should—she didn't think that she could.

She didn't believe in God. He was gone. He was no more.

But now…

A new God has risen, she decided.

A new savior, a new angel sent to bring order back to Earth.

He shall bring a new era, a perfect world—a shining world…

A new God has risen.

Rewind, repeat…

No more.

_"…Satisfied, in your eyes/ I'm the biggest fan I've got right now…"_


	2. Fear

Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note (though if you do and would like to lend it to me, than it would be most appreciated), nor do I own 'Me Against the World' by Simple Plan.

xxxxx

_"…We're not gonna be just a part of their game, we're not gonna be just the victims/ They're taking our dreams and they tear them apart, till everyone's the same…"_

The chills of the previous night's events still haunted Sakura the next day, even as she lay curled in her bed sheets in an attempt to gather as much warmth as possible. She couldn't get the face of that repulsive man—Shibutaku… was that his name?—out of her head, his voice out of her ears. It didn't help that he had died. How had he died? she wondered vaguely, unaware of the sunlight beginning to pour into her bedroom from the window.

It seemed like hours passed, and all Sakura could do was lay in bed, shivering, and wonder if she was going to go to school today. Perhaps this would be another day that she would stay home. She would need to, seeing as how she had been fired, and she desperately needed the money provided by employment.

She forced herself to move, even though it took all of her strength to do so. She knew she had no chance of getting to school on time, so therefore decided that today would be completely and utterly dedicated to finding a _new_ job. She sighed; if she didn't need the money so badly, she wouldn't even be bothering with a job in the first place.

She dressed slowly, at a sluggish pace without really bothering to make sure what she was putting on matched. It didn't honestly matter to her anymore—appearances were something she tended to ignore. You can't judge people based on appearances. 'Appearances can be misleading' was an understatement. Appearances _were_ misleading.

Staring at herself blankly in the mirror, Sakura's features creased into a slight scowl. She looked horribly tired, she thought. Dark circles colored the flesh just beneath her eyes, and she was pale. With a glance up at her hair, she noticed that it resembled that of a wet dog who had just shaken the water off of his fur.

Great. Just great.

She ran her fingers through her hair, attempting to make it somewhat decent looking before she let herself loose on the real world. When she finally managed to get it straight and less messy, it hung down limply around her face. It was flat and unhealthy.

Turning, she plopped back down on her bed and reached down over the edge, grabbing the remote from the floor and flicking on the TV. She went through the channels repeatedly, not really searching for anything in particular, but decided on the news to check the weather forecast.

The weatherwoman wore too much makeup, Sakura observed, eyeing the slender little female shown on her television screen. Her lips bore striking red lipstick, and her eyes were heavily colored with soft blue eye shadow. It made her look like a prostitute. An image of herself and the other three waitresses at Hawthorne Nights, all dressed in revealing dresses and their faces painted with colorful makeup, flashed through her mind, and she scowled. She hadn't been like the other women there. She could make something of herself—no, she _was_ going to make something of herself. She just needed a little help.

When the weather ended, the forecast declaring that it would rain today, Sakura began to change the channel, but faltered when the newscaster reappeared looking rather anxious.

"_Numerous criminals dead over the past days, all reported to have died of heart attacks. The police have come to the conclusion that there is someone behind the killings, whom they have began to refer to as 'Kira'."_

Her eyes widened, and she leaned forwards on impulse, determined not to let a single word go unheard. This had to be it… There was no other solution…

The reporter began giving off a list of criminals that had been killed by 'Kira'.

"…_Hageshii Takai…"_

The name meant nothing, but when his picture flashed across the screen, Sakura stumbled back and dropped the remote. Her eyes were wide. Him… Not him again…

She clutched the bed for support and tried to not scream. The second that she was haunted with his face again was an eternity of torture. She could almost hear their screams again… Almost smell the stench of metal that their blood gave off… Almost feel his warm breath as it cascaded down her neck, as his hands made their way slowly down her cheek…

When his face disappeared, she gasped for air and dove down for the remote controls, turning the TV off and clutching her pillow. That was years ago. She should not be reacting like this. He was dead now. Kira had killed him. Kira was with her; he was on her side.

That was all the comfort that she needed.

God was with her again.

"…_I'm a nightmare, a disaster; that's what they always say/ I'm a lost cause, not a hero, but I'll make it on my own…"_


End file.
